Entries by One People One Reef

The Ulithi ROV belongs to a class of remotely operated underwater vehicles sometimes nicknamed “flying eyeballs.” It is essentially a steerable underwater closed-circuit video camera that allows a pilot on the surface to see on TV monitors what the ROV’s cameras are “seeing” under water and to “fly” the vehicle around by remote control to look at different things.

In October of 2012, Steve Moore and undergraduates Josh Ambrose and James McClure from Cal SUMB’s Ecosystem Electronics lab were invited to join One People One Reef. Their unique contribution to this collaborative effort was to develop an ROV that could extend the accessible depth range beyond where the scientists had previously been able to collect data.

Blue Coral is known for its unique blue colour which it maintains even after death. Blue Coral, from the order Helioporacea, is actually an octocoral (polyps with 8 tentacles) and not a scleractinian coral (‘true’ coral with 6 tentacles). In fact, its not even that closely related to ‘true’ corals.

Nicole was invited to speak on March 11, 2014 at SRI International’s renown Cafe Scientifique. In her talk: “Forgotten Reefs, Forgotten People: How Conservation in Micronesia May Be Key to Sustainable Oceans” she discussed how we are empowering communities to sustainably manage their reef ecosystems.